Our first Umbrella Project!

Investigating Together:

Exploring the Charles River as a Center

“Learning and teaching should not stand on opposite banks and just watch the river flow by; instead, they should embark together on a journey down the water. Through an active, reciprocal exchange, teaching can strengthen learning how to learn.”

-       Loris Malaguzzi

The idea of embarking on an umbrella project came from work that is done in both Reggio Emilia, Italy and in the Sabot School at Stony Point in Richmond, Virginia. It is a center-wide investigation undertaken by children & teachers that continues throughout the year, in various forms both big and small. Together as a center, we defined what the topic of an umbrella project might be:

“A compelling, enticing, accessible, physical thing, event, place or idea (a noun) that elicits a emotional and metaphysical response between people. A catalyst with opportunities for investment in deep, dynamic connections, new ideas (growth).”

 For our first umbrella project (which we investigated during our 2016-2017 school year), we chose the subject of the Charles River – a unique and beautiful piece of nature in the midst of our urban surroundings. The river has always been a part of our school’s landscape – it can be seen through the Studio and T2North windows, and it is a location for occasional walks – and this year we sought to strengthen our relationship with and understanding of it through this investigation. For many classrooms, even the act of allowing children to get out of the buggy by the river was a revelation in itself. For others, the process of returning again and again led children to ask for and recognize just what a “river walk” meant. In addition, our attention and consciousness of the river opened our eyes to the way in which it changed over the course of the year – from the blooming flowers in summer, to the falling of the leaves in autumn, to the freezing of the water in winter, to the appearance of goslings in the spring. 

In order to share just a fragment about what I found to be a powerful center-wide experience, I used some of the headings from Ann Pelo’s book, TheGoodness of Rain: Developing an Ecological Identity in Young Children : walk the land, learn the names, embrace sensuality, explore new perspectives, create stories, and create rituals. Pelo describes these as ways in which we can foster children’s relationship with and stewardship of the natural world, and I believe they were all present in our investigation this past year. 

Walk the Land ------------------

Returning again and again to the river throughout the year allowed us to broaden our knowledge of its terrain. We learned the best places for children to throw rocks and sticks, or to look out over the river, to collect, to watch boats, or to gather flowers. Children grew familiar with the landmarks they would pass on the walk to and from the Charles. Teachers marked the evolution of children’s ability to traverse the challenges of uneven ground, long grass, mud, and tree roots.

At the beginning of the year, the prospect of walking along the river was a bit daunting for some. Many classrooms began with buggy and stroller rides, not yet venturing to let the children down to explore. However, over time, both teachers and children became more comfortable with the river and its banks, finding places where they felt safe to investigate beyond the buggy. Even our youngest infants spent time sitting, laying down, or crawling near the river. Building a relationship with this place allowed us to broaden our comfort zones  and place more trust and autonomy in children.

Create Rituals --------------------

Over our year of visiting and revisiting the river, many classrooms developed rituals to help build community and to strengthen children’s connections with place. In some cases, this took the form of finding a “spot” that a group would visit during each trip to the river. A gated ledge that allowed children to view the river up close without fear of actually entering the water became a favorite place for many to search for sticks to throw in on each walk. One classroom always stopped to look at the “turtle stone” that they passed on the walk to and from the river. For some children, it was important that everyone have a turn to push the crosswalk button as we waited a the juncture of memorial drive and DeWolfe street.

Embrace Sensuality --------------------

The sound of waves lapping after a boat has passed… the honking of geese… the feel of wind against your face or the sun on your back… the smell of autumn leaves, of chamomile buds, of daffodils… the softness of milkweed seeds… the prickle of burdock and sweet gum pods....  the sour taste of sorrel … the spicy taste of wild chives…

The river invited us to explore with all of our senses. We opened our ears to the sounds(after hearing a jet ski zoom back and forth, one child remarked, “It’s like a motorcycle!), and our skin to the feel of the  river’s offerings. Our eyes took in the many delights on display – the colors of autumn and spring, the ice and snow of the winter. We searched out opportunities to smell and taste where we could. Each visit became so much more than a walk – it was a full-body experience.

Explore new Perspectives ---------------

Our commitment to the Charles River led us to witness its beauty through a variety of lenses and from a variety of places. We watched it through windows, through the pillars of the John Weeks footbridge, and up close on its banks. We represented it in multiple media, and we took note of the ways the river itself changed through the seasons.

Visiting the river also offered teachers an opportunity to take on a child’s point of view. Infant teachers wondered at the view of the trees a baby might see lying on their back. Toddler teachers noticed how a seemingly small hill provided a real challenge to children still learning to walk. Preschool teachers shared the joy of being able to gather flowers without the restrictions of more manicured environments. The sight of a goose on its nest or a snail on the path brought as much excitement and interest to the adults as to the children.

Learn the Names ---------------------

As we move beyond the generic names of nature – bird, flower, leaf – into the specific, we are building our relationship with the natural word, just as we would a person. Over the course of the year, children and teachers across our center developed a greater intimacy with many of the things we encountered near the river.

Young toddlers came to know the difference between a goose and a swan, while older children (and teachers!) grew knowledgeable about some of the plants that grow on the riverbanks (“Watch out for burdock – it’s so sticky!”). We revisited these things in a variety of ways – not only on the walks themselves, but by bringing remnants into our rooms through photographs, collections, drawings, and field guides.

Create Stories ----------------------------

As we build relationships with a place, we begin to collect stories about it. We remember the things that we have seen, the special encounters we have had, and the changes we have noticed as a result of our kinship with this landscape. Through our documentation, teachers remind children of these stories and share them with those who were not present.

One example of the development of a story came early on in the year. Many children spent time painting under a large oak tree near the footbridge. Then, one day, some other children discovered that part of the tree had cracked and fallen. Over the next few days, children from many different classrooms encountered the tree in various stages of removal –from branches being cut to a stump in the ground, to an empty patch of dirt. This is a story that many preschoolers still remember and will reminisce about as we cross Memorial Drive.

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This year, we are exploring sound as a center. Stay tuned - I'm sure there will be posts about it as the year progresses!

- Katie 

Professional Development For Teachers/ By Teachers/About Teaching

At 9:00 AM, on our annual Day of Learning, 58 educators gazed around a circle expectantly, wondering about how they’d spend their day.

At 9:01 AM, a teacher stepped forward to write a question she wanted to discuss on a big piece of paper. Then another teacher stepped into the circle, then another, each sharing an issue that needed attention. Soon our agenda was full and teachers were off to their first session. No one told them what to do, where to be, or what to work on for the next three hours.

How did this come to be? First,  a little background:

For seven years, our teachers gather with educators from other centers for workshops and a keynote. We appreciate meeting and eating together, being inspired and celebrated. We’ve had some great workshops and a few incredible speakers. We’ve been satisfied, but we’ve also heard that teachers wish they had gotten more out of the day for a variety of reasons. Simultaneously, our directors are trusting teachers more to influence our shared pedagogy and share expertise with one another and others.

This year, we tried something different. We spent our morning in Open Space and our afternoon implementing the plans we’d made. We trusted teachers to co-create their learning the way that we trust children. We had already begun planning this Day of Learning, when I encountered Laurie Calvert's white paper "Moving From Compliance to Agency; What Teachers Need to Make Professional Learning Work." and I was encouraged by her words:

"constructivist theories are grounded in a body of research  that shows people

gain knowledge and meaning from the interaction between their experiences

and beliefs... for real learning to take place, the adult learners must be

both decision makers and the subjects — and agents — of their own learning. "

Harrison Owens invented Open Space Technology  by  to make workshops more like the coffee breaks in conferences, where he saw the most excitement. Open Space has facilitated whole school systems, corporations, unions, NGO’s, neighborhoods and other communities answering questions or solving problems that are big and urgent. Sometimes over a whole week! We sampled hour-long Open Space sessions at past Days of Learning with success and were ready to unleash the power of teacher’s hearts and minds making them the decision makers.

Generally, Open Space organizers propose a broad theme and then participants spontaneously co-create the agenda. Meetings are composed only of people who feel passionately about the topic, so conversations are energetic and lively, and the learning is deep.

Our theme was  “What Would Mr. Roger’s Do?”

“In a world of learning standards, digital distractions and injustice…

How do we make room for play?

How do we nurture children's interior lives?

How can we model challenging bias and building a fairer world?

How can we offer children the compassion, humor, attention to detail and radical respect that Mr. Rogers did?”

We shared some of his work with attendees in advance, to whet appetites and educate some of our international staff's who were unfamiliar with Rogers. He and his work were our point of departure and inspiration for the day.

Here are a few of the sessions that teachers convened:

How can we advocate for peace in our classroom while honoring conflict and struggle?

How do we encourage self worth and positive body image in a world that’s constantly telling kids that they are cute?

How should we facilitate and make room for weapon play?

Given the bazillion necessary transitions in ECE classrooms how do we realize rich curriculum?

How can we become collaborators in children’s learning (rather than dictators, playmates, or silent observers) and still do everything we need to do everyday?

Sessions were filled with thoughtful teachers leaning across tables, talking quickly and excitedly or thoughtfully and deliberately, laughing, crying and creating new solutions and ideas. It was incredible to witness and it was facilitated by a very simple structure.

Open Space has One Law and Four Principles. Here's how they looked for us:

“The Law of Mobility” (AKA “The Rule of Two Feet”)

You can come and go at any time. You are obliged to move if you aren’t contributing or benefitting from the session. Pairing freedom and obligation has powerful results:

[In one session about racial justice, children and families] “I felt like I immediately messed up, and I really felt so raw and uncomfortable and I was like, ‘Oh my god, I have to leave because I don’t think I can challenge myself on this right now.’ But then I was like, ‘No no no, you’re staying.’ I could change my mind about that.”

“Usual PD, you have to sit there and keep your eyes open even when it’s boring.. The first session, was a hard topic to talk about. If I wanted to bail for any reason, I could leave and go somewhere else... but I didn’t, actually. I stayed.”

In a group of care-givers, this mandate to take care of oneself and one’s own learning was radical.

Whoever comes are the right people.

A preschool teacher and an infant teacher decided to bring their children together. Our center values cross-class collaboration, but a series of scheduling emails can’t generate the same level of excitement as an unstructured conversation. Instead of working to find commonality, two teachers wondered about the same question and shared inspiration which will inform their shared work.

Whatever happens is the only thing that could have.

Our Day of Learning was three days after the 2016 presidential election. Many teachers were worried about the outcomes for education, their health care, the safety of their bodies or the bodies of their loved ones. They’d been balancing their feelings with the crucial and absorbing work of care-giving. They needed to balance bringing their whole selves to work and leaving some of their strong emotions outside the classroom.

The group grieved, told stories,  shared worries and fears. They took turns witnessing and  supporting one another. When the hour long session was “over”, they knew that another group would be arriving to have a new session, but they were not even close to done. They trusted in the principles and moved their session outside for at least another thirty minutes. After exploring their feelings, the conversation became more solution-oriented.The group named ways to care for themselves and have a healthy boundary and then shared those with the larger group.

When it starts is the right time.

Only two teachers showed up for one session about how to ground curriculum in the natural world. Their talk ranged to a general discussion of the Reggio Emilia approach and both figured they wouldn’t get to the topic that brought them together. Three other teachers arrived twenty minutes later, and it was suddenly clear that the moment was right and their work was more powerful because it started when the conditions were right.

When it's over, it's over.

During our agenda creation, one teacher asked a great question, and others were interested. Later, those interested teachers must have chosen other conversations because the convening teacher stood by her question looking eagerly around. After about ten minutes, she left to find another session that interested her; and she brought the lens of her question with her to other discussions throughout the day. This flexibility comes naturally to many teachers who adapt throughout their work day.

Three hours after that first brave teacher stood up and picked up a marker to begin creating our agenda,  we heard from teachers about the day:

“This felt much more productive and thought provoking than other professional development.”

“This is the best day in my history of Day of Learning.”

“This validates what we do.”

“It felt great to navigate my own learning. There’s usually one agenda, and I could choose my learning today.”

“I really needed this today.”

“I’m grateful to be surrounded by so many people who are thinking critically, and reflecting and questioning and acting.”

After reflecting on our process and offering gratitude and appreciation for one another, we examined the next steps that each session offered. We indicated which we would be willing to spend our time and energy pursuing by adding checks and stars. (Each person got three checks and one star to “spend” to communicate their enthusiasm.) Some of the next steps were:

Creating a “family shelf” tradition to emphasize the idea that “Everyone has a culture.”

A new practice of “refreshing” morning provocations, or offering a new provocation in the middle of the morning.

Developing a habit of trying a few different approaches to offering materials to children.

Writing to legislators about our priorities for families, teachers and children.

Teachers from three different centers will create a blog whose audience will be the general public in order to raise awareness about the importance of social emotional learning in the early years.

Initiating a preemptive conversation about aggressive play styles and narratives with toddler families and teachers BEFORE their children enter preschool.

Each of these next steps COULD have been the outcome of a particularly moving workshop, but organizers would have to choose specifically the right presenters for the sixty teachers in attendance. Our humble, open-hearted director said “My question was “What do teachers really need?” and we answered it; You need time and space to process....” With Open Space, each teacher had the opportunity to grow and learn about whatever was most exciting (or upsetting, or curious...) to them. Staff alumni attended as collaborators and co-thinkers, not “presenters” . Everyone (directors too!) inhabited the roles of learner, witness and teacher flexibly. Teachers were given the afternoon to follow up on their initiatives in their teams, and they spent lunchtime sharing stories of their mornings together.

I recently had the pleasure of seeing James Noonan speak about his dissertation, and his words from a blog post entitled "Professional Development (and Teacher Agency) As We Know It" rang in my head as teachers departed at the end of the day:

"In my research, I asked teachers to tell me about their most powerful professional

learning experience and about a corresponding professional learning experience

that they “would like never to have again.” ... Among good and bad experiences I

found ones that were both expert-led lectures and decentralized learning communities,

school-based and external, content-focused and more cerebral, years-long and hours-long, pedagogically experiential and didactic.... I am increasingly convinced that agency is one

of the most salient distinguishing features of powerful professional learning. Indeed, of the

25 powerful learning experiences I studied, 21 involved some degree of teacher agency. Of

15 corresponding negative learning experiences, 13 were mandated. The contrast, while

certainly not conclusive, was striking and suggests to me that instead of carefully balancing

the scales between agency and compliance it is preferable to tip them toward agency."

The Mightiness of the Pencil, Crayon, Pastel, and Marker

“Drawing is the discipline by which I constantly discover the world.”

- Frederick Franck

For over a month, children across our center have been coming to the Studio to draw. They have been drawing with a variety of materials - from markers to pencils to pastels - and they have been offered a number of provocations. The results have been by turns energetic, controlled, colorful, monochromatic, expansive, minimalist, exploratory, expressive, abstract, and representational. Working with children of all ages as they continue to explore the world of drawing caused me to reflect on why this process is so powerful, and has been throughout human existence. For most artists, even those who work in three-dimensional or technological forms, drawing is a necessity. In the case of James Castle, an artist who was born deaf, drawing became the means of communicating his inner life. It is, in many ways, an essential "language" for us as human beings. 

This leads me to wonder:

What does drawing offer to young children? 

Drawing works a variety of important muscles – the grip of the fingers, the flexing of the wrist, the bending of the arm. It helps to build fine motor skills, but it can also be an outlet for gross motor movements. 

Drawing translates their movements into creation - each gesture leaves behind a trace. If your arm moves in a circle, your mark also curves round and round. Pushing your drawing tool straight forward leads to a sharp, straight line. A pencil in each hand means twice as many marks appearing on your paper. Many fast, back and forth movements leave a tangle of zigzags on the page.

Drawing invites children to work as individuals to bring their ideas to life – they conceive their own concept, they choose their own materials, they determine the composition. If they return to the same work over and over again, they come to recognize the drawing as their own.

Drawing offers children opportunities for collaboration – they find space alongside each other to work on the same surface, they share materials and ideas, they discuss, dispute, and compromise. 

Drawing invites children to make connections – they connect the lines and shapes they create with the world around them, with symbols, with movements, with each other. Drawing from life - whether doing portraits, self-portraits, landscapes, or still lifes - invites them to look closer at sights they see every day, to notice and appreciate their nuances. 

Drawing helps children enter into multiple literacies – they imagine their series of squiggles becoming words, they see lines connecting to form letters, they begin to draw representationally. Zigzag lines across a paper become a letter written to parents being missed. Three dots remind someone of their symbol, or a curved line looks like the S in someone's name. 





There are surely more things to add to this list - these are simply the ones that come to my mind when I think of the power of drawing. 

What additions would you make? What does drawing offer the young children in your life? What does it offer YOU? 

Learning from Experience

Each day I set out materials and plan experiences for children of many different ages. There are always many variables at work during any given visit, and I never know exactly how things will go. Sometimes I am frustrated if the set-up does not prove as inspiring as I had hoped, or if children need a lot of help and reminders to respect the materials that are available.  I start to feel like a failure. However, even in those moments, the children’s actions and reactions hold the seeds for a way out of those feelings, and into more successful set-ups the next time.

Throughout the autumn, each session in the Studio is an opportunity for children from a classroom to familiarize themselves with a particular material, as well as the Studio space itself. For young toddlers, most of this experience lies in “messing about,” where materials are set out with minimal guidance or instruction. Preschoolers and older toddlers will experience this, as well, but may move on to learning particular techniques that will help them to use the material with more finesse.

For example, Preschool Two moved from

open experimentation with clay on tables and on the floor,

to learning about scoring and adding slip,

to opening, pinching, and attaching pieces of clay using the score and slip technique,

to creating sculptures modeled on hydrangeas, black-eyed Susans, and asters set out on the table.

This process required learning from me, my fellow teachers, and the children. Each time a small group worked in the Studio, I learned something about their thinking and understanding of the clay. I learned what aspects of the day’s work they found challenging and what parts they were able to connect to what they had done before. This new knowledge helped me decide what changes I should make when I worked with this group or others.

 

For example, we practiced the method of scratching and wetting the surface of the clay to attach pieces to each other. Since we moved right into this method when we sat down, the children began to join pieces of clay without really shaping them. They weren’t very invested in their work, and they didn’t notice the shape and potential “being” of their clay. I realized that for them to gain the practice and skills I was hoping for, we would have to approach the problem a little differently.

For the following groups, we started not with joining pieces, but with making shapes from the clay. Children were very confident in creating long “snake” shapes, and balls, and soon they had many pieces to choose from. Now was the time to work in the joining process. The children already had their pieces shaped, so joining them together became an opportunity to form something new. The experience this time around was much richer. Nava and Everett both began to experiment in forming symbols from their clay pieces. M. made several snakes that she lined up “like a train.” Phineas joined his snake shapes into a single long path that curled around his board.

Encouraged by this, I incorporated this successful process into the following week, where children spent time opening a large piece of clay together, creating a communal base that they could then add pieces onto using the same techniques we had been practicing.

The creations that children came up with were amazing! Their blocks of clay transformed into sidewalks, then houses, then waterparks! They began to attach their clay in more careful and intricate ways, creating bridges and waterspouts. One group – featuring Justin, Phineas, and F. – decided very early on that they wanted to create some sort of building together.

“I’m making sewers,” Justin said as he dug holes near the bottom of the mound, “I’m making a place to catch the rain so the house doesn’t get ruined.”

Phineas began to attach a long snake near the top, “This is the thing that makes the lightning so it doesn’t hurt the house.”

When we reached our session of recreating flowers in clay – our chance to put all of our knowledge of this material together as we examined these specimens of the natural world – I could see the children’s previous experiences come into play. At first they made the parts of their flower – sometimes the stem, sometimes the petals or leaves – before thinking about how they would join them together. Luke, who was making a black-eyed Susan, rolled a single long snake that he broke into smaller pieces for his petals. Phineas worked to shape his leaf for the same plant so that it “bends” just like the one on the real plant.  

Some children, like Nava, E., and Luke, sought to make their flowers stand up, while others lay them flat on their boards – each technique bringing its own unique challenges. They carefully went through the steps – score, wet, push together, and smooth – for each piece that they joined, clearly invested in making something that would hold together.

Many of the children began with the black-eyed Susan as their muse – the flower they declared to be the “easiest” to make. One particularly satisfying moment for me as a teacher was when Everett and Phineas had each finished this flower and decided to “try” to make another – the hydrangea – with its small, round petals. Everett even went on to do the “hardest one,” the aster, complete with “all of those spiky leaves.”

Thinking back to our first attempts at attaching clay pieces to each other, I was grateful for what the children had taught me in teaching them. Working alongside them, I had learned to slow down, think first about shaping the clay, then about how it should fit together, before moving on to the actually joining process. The children’s growing confidence in their work was a testimony to their own learning, as well as my own.

Each class is broken into many groups and each group comes for the same general experience in the Studio. But I know I would not be doing my job as a teacher if I offered each group exactly the same experience. I am always so grateful to the first group that comes, because they help me to see what works and what doesn’t about how I have planned, arranged, and introduced the day’s session.

Sometimes the smallest tweak in a set-up can make it more inviting, and the slightest re-structuring of a material’s presentation can help children to embark on a new relationship with it. Those moments of so-called failure can often be the best moments for learning, because they force you to think even more deeply about your own reactions and the reactions of the children you observed, just as the tumbling down of a child’s clay structure invites them to consider new and better ways to build it. Art educator Jessica Hoffman Davis believes that one of the best arguments for keeping arts in our schools is that they offer “the chance to have daring, edgy, generating, and important encounters with failure… For artists, mistakes open doors for their work.” I would say that perhaps the same goes for teaching. Teaching is not (and should not be) about getting everything right the first time. It is about the “generative” process of learning from and growing through our failures, and seeing them for the amazing teachers they are. 

"In Defense of Failure" by Jessica Hoffman Davis, EdWeek, October 8, 2003.